GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7770, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7770 should be 350% faster than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (350%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 will be quite a bit (more or less 355%) better at AF than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31200 (355%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7770 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11600 (264%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.